If you could still smile with your mandibles as you watched your colony's workers begin to go about the work to enlarge the nest and to dismember the spider that had been brought into the nest and exposed to the mutagenic nature of Divine Fire Ant venom you would. You were free and you could feel the love from all the other ants that had adopted you as their queen after their old queen had died of old age. That was a big thing, as while you might not have set out to become an ant... a queen... you did cherish your freedom and didn't want to end up in a lab being poked and prodded, and after all your time as a queen ant, you'd come to enjoy the feelings of love that the colony gave you. It was an amazing feeling that you'd never really had before.
There were concerns in your mind related to what Doctor Benjamin was going to do beyond exposing your transformation to the company he worked for and the potential for them to inform your parents. That raised concerns on how your parents would respond, but for the moment there wasn't much more than what you'd already done. Using Hank's cellphone you'd sent an email to your parents to try and assure them that things were fine. The results of that would have to wait until after they'd read the email. Until that happened, all you could do was worry. Hopefully your parents would respond well.
Doctor Benjamin was a different problem, as he had the fear of you as a giant ant devastating the Amazon. In a way that might be a true scientific concern of a naturalist and even a professional scientist, but it would mean the loss of your freedom and the loss of the colony's love. The fact that Hank had become your prime drone, the colony's previous queen had grown and mated with you and you had laid your first egg, and the colony had also grown to giant size would only increase his fears. However, since Divine Fire Ant venom caused invertebrates to grow in size, that would show to Doctor Benjamin that your colony wouldn't devastate the Amazon. Other insects and arachnids could breed just as fast as you could and were now. Your colony could not eat all the bugs in the Amazon and that would surely allow Doctor Benjamin to let you and Hank be to grow your colony and learn more about your new species.
You looked over to Hank, the man who had become your prime drone. He was looking around to the walls that were glowing from the bio-luminescent saliva that your workers had used to strengthen the walls of your colony's initial chamber. He had been the scientist running the lab that you had stumbled into before becoming the queen ant that you now were. He'd been somewhat turned on by seeing you as a giant ant and had been heavily fascinated with insects, leading him to his study of the Divine Fire Ant. It was through him that you learned how new the ant species was and that he'd been researching it, and you'd agreed to help him with his research, and the colony had hoped he would become your drone. And so far, things looked to be progressing well. He was your drone and you had laid the first egg that he had sired and in about an hour or so, you felt you would soon lay your second egg. That made you wish you could smile, even with your exoskeleton.
"We've come a long way, haven't we," you said to Hank using the telepathic communication system that went through your antennae to his.
"Yes," Hank answered, "we'll be able to research into ants in general and Divine Fire Ants in particular that no one has been able to do. Once we can get that done all of the concerns that Doctor Benjamin has. What frightens him is the same thing that fascinates me... is that the species is so new."
You slowly nodded you head and then reached to him with your antennae. You could feel yours touch his and felt the warmth of his love as the two of you touched antennae. It felt odd and inhuman yet human all at once. It felt inhuman and odd in the way the love was communicated through sensory organs that extended from your head. It felt human because it was a personal sort of love. It was like Hank did care for you personally.
"So, how will the research go?" you asked him, "Remember, I don't want our children poked or prodded."
"I don't think there will be any poking or prodding," Hank answered, "when I was human... the way I could study the colony was by observing their actions and monitoring their specific pheromone productions with the sensory equipment machines that I had in my lab."
"You learned by watching us?" one of your other drones, Oscar, asked, sounding a little curious.
"Yes, in terms of your behaviors and so on," Hank answered, "but from an outside perspective, I could only place my findings based on what I'd observed... which would leave a lot of things either open to interpretation or speculation based on what is already known about ants in general."
There was a silence for a few moments as you looked to Hank and he looked to you and the other drones as you gathered in your section of the chamber. After a few moments, Hank did speak again.
"Now though... now that we are at the heart of the colony, I can actually ask the other drones and workers on behaviors, intentions, designs, why they do certain things and even how they think," Hank continued, "Our study of the Divine Fire Ant will actually be like the way humans have studied themselves."
"That sounds good," you commented.
"And it'll mean no one gets hurt," Hank assured you, "and hopefully we can do this quickly."
That made you tilt your head a bit in confusion. You figured that you'd have plenty of time to be with Hank for all the things he'd want to study.
"What do you mean quickly?" you asked.
"My phone has good batteries, but they aren't going to last indefinitely," Hank answered, "so, I'll need to complete my research get it typed down and emailed to Doctor Benjamin and my employers so that they learn everything about the Divine Fire Ant that we've found out before the battery dies. They can then publish the information and everyone will know about our species and understand that we aren't a threat... and in fact by coming here, we've actually returned to where the Divine Fire Ant's natural range is... so unlike the Argentine Ant or the Red Imported Fire Ant, we AREN'T an invasive species anywhere."
"So... we're better than other ants?" you asked.
"Of course we are!" Martin declared.
"To human scientists, the fact that our specific species isn't invasive, yes we are," Hank answered, "proving that, however, will be dependent on getting that information out... which means beating my phone's battery life."
"Can you do that?" Harry asked.
"I hope so," Hank admitted slowly.
That only let you sigh heavily. Being left alone would be nice, but you also knew that you would need to have at least some contact with the outside world, at least to keep in touch with family or make sure that the research that Hank wanted to do would be presented honestly and wouldn't be twisted to lead to humanity deciding to try and eradicate them because of the unique abilities that the Divine Fire Ant had. It made you wonder if you should send a mental command to the workers assigned to leave a trail that Doctor Benjamin could follow to the beetle that had been killed and enlarged earlier that the man needed to brought into the nest and convinced to work with them more directly.